Sightings 12/3/07
Catholic Concerns
-- Martin E. Marty
Paul
Stanosz, a sociologist and priest in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, speaks of
difficult times: "It's been a rough year…where I have been a priest since
1984. Recently the Archdiocese announced the closing of the academic program at
its 151-year-old seminary. Its central offices…are for sale to pay clergy
sexual-abuse claims, and bankruptcy looms." Milwaukee is not alone in travail.
Stanosz is not a ranting leftist critic, but, as a consultant on
matters of priestly morale, an empathic servant of the Archdiocese. More
close-up visions from him: "Among priests, meanwhile, there is much talk of
high stress, poor health, and low morale. More and more are battling burnout
and depression as well as suffering heart attacks and dying prematurely. Two
have committed suicide." Not all is well in the parishes: "The steep decline
in religiosity among Catholic youth is also evidence of an acute crisis." The
editors of Commonweal, the Catholic magazine in which Stanosz's comments
appeared on November 23rd, lifted out one sentence and made a bold subhead of
it: "Roman Catholicism in the next two decades will almost certainly face the
sort of enormous decline that mainline Protestant denominations suffered in the
1960s." On many levels, according to a variety of sociological accounts in the
same Commonweal, it already has. [Click here to see Stanosz's Commonweal piece.]
Why care, in a column
chartered by a Center which focuses on "public religion?" One can care
personally: I've had familiarity with and emotional ties to the Milwaukee scene
for sixty-five (sixty-five!) years, since we Lutheran kids debated Jesuit
high-schoolers. I've benefited from the later ministries of two former
archbishops, remain an admiring friend of another and have had a few pleasant
exchanges with the current leader. I can see the glow of Milwaukee and other
lakeshore cities from my high-rise window in Chicago. Yes, I care.
Others would care, since the Catholic one-fourth of America remains
enormous, weighty, and in some ways—especially on the lay front—vital. The
church cannot deliver or block votes from post-bloc Catholics in politics, but
politicians find reasons to court post-modern Catholic movements and causes.
One could go on and on. Fellow Christians in the various Protestant ranks and
flanks have not lunged in a spirit of Schadenfreude, joy in someone else's
misfortunes, or triumphally, as if they were above the crises. Protestant
commentators have been almost silent about the "clerical abuse crisis," also
because of other kinds of clerical shortcomings among them.
No,
their mood is elegiac. So are most of the Catholic authors in this issue of
Commonweal: They review sociological analyses pointing to dimensions of
the crisis and they notice and complain about the growing schism across the
generations, posing the "JPII" younger harder-liners versus the more moderate
"Vatican II" seniors. The editors are concerned about the encouragement given
to clerical forces that distance themselves from and put down the laity. Just
enough of the contributors find glimmers of hope. Even Father Stanosz does not
let himself be done in, but notes that "the problems are embodied in the worn,
torn, aging, and overweight colleagues I observed" at a recent assembly. The
greatest threat to their "well-being is denial." Post-denial, are there reasons
for new hope?
